It is an ironic paradox that we should have begun to learn the necessity of preserving natural balances at the same time that we have achieved the means and the driving impulse to destroy them. Ecology, the study of all forms of life and their mutual dependence, has become a major science even while our technology has given us the most effective tools in all history with which to blight and despoil life's fundamental necessities. We now know what we should do for our present and future welfare, but we wilfully race toward irreparable change that violates that knowledge. This is an old conflict, this war between man's arrogance and his wisdom, but we have given it new and terrible dimensions. Reluctant to face its consequences, we call it a mere difference of opinion about conservation.